Sunday, April 5, 2009

Oor Chin Yu Bilee

Conference, sweet, waiting on the translations to get here, I can't believe the way time passes, 6 months ago I watched it in Choibalsan, and a year ago I was sitting in Enkhtaivan marveling at how fast time was going because last time a year ago I was watching it in America, and now the next I watch will be in America again. Weird.

We had the first Baptism in the Darhan sign language work. Woo. Adversary went all out on our new member. The pastors, well many of them, have been stalking the people who meet with us, yelling at them, threatening etc. Everybody and their mother was coming down and getting on her case about being baptized, her sister started beating her, and boon yum bolson. It was pretty nuts and on top of all that Thursday before the baptism, she goes to invite her best friend (who's less active) and instead of the expected congratulations she got chewed out for an hour. If you tried to convey trying to talk while crying in a text message, it would probably resemble what showed up on our cell phone. She asked us to come over so we went with another deaf sister who is doing a mini mission. The inactive lady was going nuts. At first it was about all the "proof" that her pastor had that his church was true (take your pick from Noah’s ark in Turkey, signs of times, etc) but then she started making personal attacks such as our investigator was too stupid to understand anything at her church and lots of other jabs at her worth at a person. Now this got on two of my nerves negen bol . . . (1) I've researched Christian history better than most people, and for the most part, it is like sand. Everybody likes beach side property but makes for a horrible foundation, and (2) I'll it quietly and let people do whatever they want until they make people I know cry.

My companion describe it as, I had just been sitting and watching for about 20 minutes of the lesson, letting the 3 of them go back and forth on stuff till the inactive lady went after our investigator. My companion was blocking my line of sight to talk to the lady, so I reached out and pushed him back a foot (I don’t remember that part) and went on to teach the principle of faith in a way that after 15 minutes she was sitting dumbfounded. I've have never done that in English or in Mongolian, and my sign language is decent, but it's not that good. I think this is the first time i can truly claim a more visible manifestation of the gift of tongues. She said it was the first time she's seen something drive the other lady to silence, much less dislodge her from her stated position. By the end the friend said she wouldn’t come to see the baptism, but wouldn’t make herself an active persecution. So she got baptized, and it was really sweet, our branch is trying really hard to learn sign language, so after the baptismal service (which started an hour late because no one had a key to the closet, and the water was 33 degrees or so, I mean I lost the feeling in my legs just standing in it.) everyone introduced and talked and stuff.

And speaking of random, the Akhlagch and Uilchlegch from the other church have been going around harrassing our investigators. A couple of the youth came running into the church building all sweaty and said that one of them had been waiting outside their school to chew them out but they blitzed off to the only place where they were pretty sure he wouldn't follow them. Another time they went to the kids home and started yelling at him, but the kid responded with such a testimony about prayer that it left the pastor with only the weak response that "God doesn't listen to prayers until you're 30,and until then you aren't able to decide". It's pretty silly. They came up to us, too. We were walking down the street when a guy comes up out of nowhere and asks "You're Ganbold the deaf Mormon missionary right" (at the time we hadn't been speaking in sign language and I was talking to people doing ITLs). So they tried to get us to argue, asked me a whole bunch of doctrinal questions, but after answering most of it right out of the 2nd lesson, they all quit from that and tried to make attacks on my companion about trying to steal everybody to get rich, but after pointing out that we don’t get paid and most of the people had first asked us to meet with them, and from all them it was everybody’s choice to do what they want in life and we don't force anyone into doing anything, they quit from talking about church stuff and we got their phone number. lol.

We had 8 deaf people at church, there would be more but it's a pretty far drive. A sister bore a really powerful testimony to one of our ALAs who hadn't been to church in almost 5 years or more, and after sacrament they were all hugging and crying and stuff . . . women . . .

oor chin yu bilee.......did 30 ITLs with one of the new missionaries, got 18 referrals in a part of town where I've gotten 3 in the last 2 months and more on top of that for other places

Jay is now on the "you're silly" list. Dad and all that crowed still on said list.